Near Site of Disaster, Workers Strive for the Routine

Visitors and commuters came before sunrise to the trade center site. Credit
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

Under a September sky as blue and promising as it had been five years before, thousands of workers marched through Lower Manhattan yesterday morning, wishing for nothing more than a routine day at the office.

They moved elbow-to-elbow through subway stations, up staircases and along sidewalks in a rush to reach meetings, serve customers or trade stocks. Many were determined not to dwell on the horrible history of the day, the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attack that brought the World Trade Center crashing down in an avalanche of steel and glass and grief.

But, of course, the memories were still too fresh and painful to ignore completely. The best the workers in the financial district could hope for was a busy day punctuated constantly by the tolling of bells and, only occasionally, by emotional outbursts.

In the offices of the N.A.S.D., the main regulator of stock brokerages, a box of tissues sat on the sill of every window overlooking ground zero. Down the hall, Deborah L. Fling, a secretary to the staff lawyers, was boxing up documents from a completed legal case to be sent off and archived. She said she was glad to have assignments to occupy her mind.

Annette Talt, an executive assistant at the N.A.S.D., said she had made it to her office on the 48th floor of 1 Liberty Plaza from her home on Staten Island by bus as usual. But as soon as she glanced toward the glass through which she had watched the south tower burn, her defenses failed.

“I really thought that none of this would affect me,” said Ms. Talt, 64, who had been alone in the silent executive suite when she heard the first jet crash across the street. “Then, I just cried.”

Every time a bell tolled, Ms. Talt cocked her head and checked her watch, trying to determine its significance.

Several blocks away at the New York Stock Exchange, traders had less time to reflect. They spent the hour before the opening bell sizing up the demand to buy or sell certain stocks, as usual.

Floor brokers wearing telephone headsets and carrying electronic order pads buzzed by Sean M. McCooey’s post to check on the pre-market interest in shares of Viacom, the media conglomerate, and Sasol Limited, a South African energy company. As he monitored incoming orders flashing in blue bands on a chest-high electronic screen, Mr. McCooey said the morning had been “typically slow” for a Monday at the tail end of summer, but he did not think that sentiments about the anniversary had been a factor.

“I think people made the adjustment in terms of dealing with it some time ago,” said Mr. McCooey, who added that all of his staff reported for work on time. “It wasn’t like we had to give anybody a pep talk.”

The hum of activity on the exchange floor built to a low roar as the opening bell neared. Then, like hundreds of actors on a stage, the brokers, clerks and exchange officials all froze at precisely 9:29 a.m., observing a minute of silence before the market opened, interrupted only by the soft chirrup of electronic devices. After 60 seconds, a single, faint bell sounded the return to action in the citadel of capitalism.

“What you got on BN?” asked Kenneth J. Polcari, 45, of Armonk, N.Y., a broker and a managing director of Polcari/Weicker. He had made his way over to the post where stock in the Banta Corporation — which his customer did not want to sell for less than $48 — was being traded for $47.05. Like many others who work downtown, Mr. Polcari caught a lucky break on Sept. 11, 2001. Invited by colleagues to join them for breakfast, he left his office on the 55th floor of the south tower about 8:20 a.m., less than an hour before a jet slammed into it.

A half-hour or so into trading yesterday, Mr. Polcari detected a mood that was more subdued than usual. Then again, he noted, the market was down 21 points.

At midday on Deutsche Bank’s stock-trading floor at 60 Wall Street, traders were devouring sandwiches and salads in the usual spot, hunched over keyboards that control a triptych of electronic screens. Surrounded by dozens of TV screens carrying images of the events of that other Sept. 11, the traders could not forget what day it was as they stood and called out orders across the room.

“It was a typical Monday morning,” said Joseph L. Ferrarese, the head stock trader. “But the hard part about it is it’s a personal day.”

Verizon’s headquarters at 140 West Street, across Vesey Street from ground zero, was the most heavily damaged of the surviving office buildings around the trade center site. Yesterday, employees gathered in the sumptuously restored Art Deco lobby there to observe a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m.

But Carmen Bermudez, 32, a staff manager from Great Kills, Staten Island, had already observed a personal moment of silence on the 25th floor when she arrived about 6:30 a.m.

“Before I turned on my computer and got buried in work,” she said, “I knew I had to take a moment out for myself. And then I got buried in work.” She spent her morning catching up with messages after a weeklong vacation.

One floor above, Catherine Gasteyer, 51, a manager of external affairs who lives in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, planned to spend time at 9/11 observances. But she soon found that the demands of planning the company’s fiber-optic service overwhelmed her schedule, with a conference call and lots of e-mail messages.

Out on the streets, deliverymen wheeled carts of produce into delis and merchants hustled to sell goods to men and women in suits and ties.

At a news kiosk at Broadway and John Street, Perry Patel of Flushing, Queens, stood behind a counter selling lottery tickets to his regular customers. Mr. Patel, 35, said that he had arrived at the newsstand at his customary time of 6 a.m. As usual, he found bundles containing 350 daily newspapers waiting.

Mr. Patel, whose kiosk is next to a construction site, noticed just one difference from recent days: “When I got here this morning, there wasn’t as much noise in the street,” he said. “The construction guys with the jackhammers weren’t here.”

Steven Harris, wearing a purple fedora, a purple shirt and purple shoes, said his makeshift shoeshine stand on the west side of Broadway near Pine Street had not been the same since Sept. 11. Where once he earned $100 a day, now he might take in $35 for 12 hours of work, he said.

But despite the drop in income, Mr. Harris, 46, said that he and his brothers — Travis, 50, and Linwood, 51 — had no intention of giving up the spot they have occupied since 1977 next to an iron fence that encircles Trinity Church.

“This is what I do every day,” he said. “This is what I’ve done for 29 years. And this is what I’m going to keep doing.”

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Near Site of Disaster, Workers Strive for the Routine. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe